Sony Purchases Game Streaming Service Gaikai

[Guild McCommunist]

Before E3 this year, it was heavily rumored that Sony would be entering a deal with game streaming services, the two most prominent ones currently being OnLive and Gaikai. Today though, its been announced that Sony purchased Gaikai.

The purchase came at $380 million, although Gaikai previously said they sought $500 million for the company. Nothing however has been announced with the purchase though, although Sony Computer Electronics president Andrew House has said that Sony will be bringing "a broad array of content" instantly to consumers.

Last month, Gaikai partnered up with Samsung to bring the game streaming service to their line of TVs. How this will affect their TVs and Sony's future and current products though is still up in the air.

Source

 

[IBNobody]

Thanks for posting. I was wondering when someone would mention it.

We'll see what Sony can do with Gaikai. Right now, it kinda sucks because they only have demos. It's also the reason why OnLive doesn't have Dragon Age Origins.

 

[Gahars]

One of the big three is moving in on the game streaming market. I don't think we'll see anything come out of this move too soon.

Still, it's looking like the next console generation could be getting very interesting.

 

[tbgtbg]

Pretty telling when Gaikai is supposedly in the top two yet this is the first time I've ever heard of it. Most people don't want this type of service. Hopefully Sony just uses it as an alternative and doesn't do something dumb like make PS4 stream only.

 

[IBNobody]

Pretty telling when Gaikai is supposedly in the top two yet this is the first time I've ever heard of it.

That's because Gaikai is a distant second.

Most people don't want this type of service. Hopefully Sony just uses it as an alternative and doesn't do something dumb like make PS4 stream only.

The market is bigger than you think.

Do you own a tablet or a smartphone? Wouldn't you like to play your PS3 games on it? I would!

Currently, OnLive is doing pretty good. They even have a controller that works with smartphones.

 

[Midna]

Do you own a tablet or a smartphone? Wouldn't you like to play your PS3 games on it? I would!

Over a shoddy internet connection with brilliant latency? Fuck no I would not. Game streaming is something that I never want to take off.

 

[IBNobody]

Over a shoddy internet connection with brilliant latency? Fuck no I would not. Game streaming is something that I never want to take off.

It will take off because enough of us live near big US cities with decent internet speeds.

Just because you have a bad internet connection now doesn't mean that you'll have a bad one 2-3 years from now. Things change. Progress is made. That's where I am... I'm currently on a slow 6Mbps DSL service at the edge of my coverage zone, and I expect to be there for the next 3 years. I'm okay with waiting. Eventually my area will get better coverage.

 

[Midna]

Over a shoddy internet connection with brilliant latency? Fuck no I would not. Game streaming is something that I never want to take off.

It will take off because enough of us live near big US cities with decent internet speeds.

Just because you have a bad internet connection now doesn't mean that you'll have a bad one 2-3 years from now. Things change. Progress is made. That's where I am... I'm currently on a slow 6Mbps DSL service at the edge of my coverage zone, and I expect to be there for the next 3 years. I'm okay with waiting. Eventually my area will get better coverage.

You will never have a perfect latency free game experience over internet streaming, regardless of the speed of your connection. The subscription fees aren't too exciting either.

 

[Hells Malice]

Pretty telling when Gaikai is supposedly in the top two yet this is the first time I've ever heard of it.

That's because Gaikai is a distant second.

Distant indeed. I've never once heard of 'em either.
OnLive must have been murdering them.

 

[shakirmoledina]

i still have not been told about the experience of onlive gaming. is it really fun all the time?
on a normal awesome pc, there may be times when u feel the game is not responding or stuttering due to bkg loading. does this not have this plus internet problems?

 

[RupeeClock]

Either they'll do everything with this or nothing with this.
Sometimes buyouts like this are just to eliminate threats.

 

[Master Mo]

Vers interesting...

One question: I personally never streamed a game so is there any lag? I guess it would depend on your internet speed but I'm not sure...

 

[FAST6191]

It depends Master Mo- if you are going true streaming of video and all then lag is almost mandated by connections (speed is one thing and not terribly important if you have a standard European grade connection* but lag is another and that is where we run up against physics although much like lag/high ping in general there are things that can be done to lessen the effects**. If you have a slightly fatter client that does a tiny bit of basic processing on the user end (not too hard/expensive) then things get a lot better very quickly.

*ISPs have expressed concern over having to stream content as many are built with the idea that most people will not use all the capacity all the time.

**a lot of people doing streaming video and even people like steam have or have contracts with people that put servers in exchanges and even larger cabinets to lessen ping and backbone bandwidth concerns.

As for Sony doing this I have long liked the idea of an end to the console wars as far as different processing bricks go and although I can not say I am entirely excited by streaming being the thing to do it I guess steps in that direction work for me.

 

[SixSenseEagle]

Vers interesting...

One question: I personally never streamed a game so is there any lag? I guess it would depend on your internet speed but I'm not sure...

Yes it will lag, and yes it will depend on your internet speed. Like say for instance if you have something like 5mb or 3mb of speed you're good to go but if you play a game for a while some lag/quality might cut off if you have a low-end-PC.

Well in the future I really hope Onlive stream mmo games for people who don't have high-end PCs or don't have enough HDD space that would be a winner right there.

Here's mines internet speed
http://www.speedtest.../2042626789.png
Onlive Account: yup
Name:Royalace121
Onlive-game-play:

 

[IBNobody]

i still have not been told about the experience of onlive gaming. is it really fun all the time?
on a normal awesome pc, there may be times when u feel the game is not responding or stuttering due to bkg loading. does this not have this plus internet problems?

It works, and the games are playable. They run at 30FPS. If you have a PC decent enough to run the original game, you would prefer the PC version.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Just because some of you have shit internets doesn't mean you should piss on the parade of everyone else.

I used OnLive plenty of times and it runs well. Input lag is only noticeable for a few seconds and once you compensate for it you barely even notice. I beat all of Arkham Asylum and W40K: Space Marine on OnLive, both of them play fine. The quality is pretty good too.

But of course this isn't Gaikai, I thought Gaikai specialized mostly in demos. Perhaps Sony is gonna start offering streaming demos, which I would definitely prefer. I really hate downloading like a 1GB+ demo only to spend almost as much time playing it as I did downloading it and then deleting it off my hard drive (for my Xbox 360, at least).

Or, if you're some type of dreamer, they may offer games you purchased on their online stores to be playable across all Sony devices. Like a PS3 game I purchase off the store can be streamed to a Vita. But that's doubtful.

Regardless I'm eager to see what will come of this.

 

[ComeTurismO]

Really interesting and excited.. Capture cards, no longer needed?

 

[Deleted_171835]

Or, if you're some type of dreamer, they may offer games you purchased on their online stores to be playable across all Sony devices. Like a PS3 game I purchase off the store can be streamed to a Vita. But that's doubtful.

Not going to happen.

All of Gaikai's image quality and latency optimisation efforts have been built around PC technology, which in the short term may cause issues for Sony, because cloud servers aim to provide tolerable controller response by running games at twice the frame-rate of a typical console title. Local latency on a 30FPS game (defined by the time taken between button press and the resulting action on-screen) is around 100ms at best, typically dropping to 50-66ms when run at 60FPS. Gaikai and OnLive aim to use that latency "saving" to offset the cost of encoding, transmitting and decoding video. The result is streaming gameplay with ballpark console response levels - in theory, at least.

There's nothing to stop Sony simply installing a big bunch of PlayStation 3s in each datacentre, but the result would be highly sub-optimal as there would be no 60FPS vs. 30FPS latency off-setting at all - all the 'cloud stuff' would simply be added to the existing lag. Sony's Remote Play isn't particularly effective for this exact reason, and that's running on a local connection.

http://www.eurogamer...ory-sony-gaikai

Current game streaming services are built for PC games that run at 60FPS. Latency would be complete shit with most PS3 games.

 

[The Catboy]

I really hate the idea of video game steaming. Mostly because I am not just a gamer, but I am a collector. I love owning and having my games.
As well it would really suck to be playing a game one day, then have it remove because of some stupid reason.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I really hate the idea of video game steaming. Mostly because I am not just a gamer, but I am a collector. I love owning and having my games.
As well it would really suck to be playing a game one day, then have it remove because of some stupid reason.

I seriously doubt gaming will switch over to game streaming in a while, maybe in like 10-20 years, but for now, the next step is digital distribution.

Plus, with soulx's post, it seems most likely they'll do this for demo streaming or even using cloud streaming for other purposes outside of gaming. Like OnLive gives you a streamable desktop to work with. Not sure how this would apply to Sony, but it's just an example as to how streaming can be used outside of gaming.